A medical clinic with offices in Sidney and Brentwood Bay says it will end walk-in access at the end of March to reduce wait times for its 15,000 patients.
Heather Edward, executive director of the Shoreline Medical Society, has told patients that “overwhelming demand” for its two walk-in services has led to “unsatisfactory wait times” for patients, and posed a challenge for its medical teams.
Patients with a physician or nurse practitioner at Shoreline Medical who need urgent care will still be able to contact the clinic, where at least two appointments are reserved each day for those needing urgent care.
“There will be no change to attached patients except for greater access and hopefully more ability for us to focus on their needs,” Edward said in an interview.
For those without a family doctor who use the walk-in clinic, Shoreline said it will follow up on tests it has ordered and maintain walk-in-clinic patient records.
Shoreline Medical has grown to include 25 family physicians, a nurse practitioner, nurses, a pharmacist, and mental-health-care worker from just five doctors when the charitable organization was created in 2015. The physicians have varying work days and patient lists.
Shoreline originally planned to attach 10,000 Saanich Peninsula residents with a family physician but now has a patient roster of 15,000 people, said Edward, representing the “lion’s share” of the patients on the Saanich Peninsula.
Throughout the pandemic, Shoreline continued to provide walk-in care with additional support from the Health Ministry and South Island Primary Care Network, Edward said.
But of late, demand for the walk-in-clinic has overwhelmed physicians who also serve Shoreline’s youth clinic and work at Saanich Peninsula Hospital, she said, emphasizing no doctors are being lost as part of the walk-in service closure.
“We’re going to analyze, we’re going to assess and we’re going to see how we can best meet the needs of our patients and then we will look at the future.”
Edward said an expanded Island Health primary care service at the Peninsula Health Unit across from the hospital will open this spring to help meet the needs of the Saanich Peninsula community.
“Island Health is providing that service — they’re going to provide health services for people for episodic care,” said Edward.
Island Health confirmed that its goal is to open a new expanded primary-care service at the health unit in the spring, and that a new physician-led primary-care clinic is also anticipated to open in the spring on the Peninsula.
Edward said that when capacity allows, Shoreline hopes to attach more patients to one of its family doctors through the Health Connect Registry.
“We’re working on stabilizing the current system and then we’re going to look at optimizing but first things first we want our patients to have access to care.”
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